Community Parson: Harvest, home & commonwealth

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Harvest, home & commonwealth

Proper 22A October 5, 2014

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20

Psalm 19

Philippians 3:4b-14

Matthew 21:33-46

In a conversation with a Jewish friend last week, I was reminded of what a rich time of the year this is for the Jewish High Holidays. In these days between Rosh Hashana – New Year’s – and Yom Kippur – the day of atonement – faithful Jews stop and take stock of what is going on in their lives, in the world, in their lives and in the world with God. The time of the year supports that introspection, doesn’t it: this time of harvest, of cooling temperatures, of gathering-in, of re-grouping after a busy summer, of hunkering down before the challenges of the winter -- and for those of us who still live by a school calendar – before all the hard work of the coming year really gets going.

Our gospel lesson today is about a harvest-time time of reckoning – a little parable about God’s economy, meaning the way God organizes God’s household. The Greek word “oikia” means house, and “oikonomia” means the management of a house… hmm, does that tantalizing Swedish word for a fabulous store full of household furnishings also come from the Greek word for house??? Does that mean God’s house would look like Ikea??? I somehow think not. God’s economy is not about things you buy and sell, nor is it about looking great, keeping up with fashion trends, or coming out on top with a bargain.

The place to start as we understand what it is to live in God’s household, what it is to play by the rules of God’s economy, is with our first lesson, followed up by that lyrical psalm 19. Moses delivers the ten commandments – and by extension, the whole of the law -- and the psalmist tells us what a delight and a joy it is to follow that law. It revives the soul, rejoices the heart, endures for ever, and is more to be desired than gold.

But in this harvest time, let’s look at the Gospel lesson. If part of God’s household contains a vineyard, then one of the crisis points in the year is the time of harvest. The crop has ripened at once, and there is not a moment to lose to get in all in. Such a crisis is fraught with opportunity and peril. “The harvest is plentiful,” Jesus say elsewhere in this Gospel of Matthew, “but the laborers are few.”

The prophets use the image of the vineyard to describe sacred land, God’s land, the symbolic place where the people live in obedience to God, to the Torah, that law of Exodus and of Psalm 19. Outside the vineyard, beyond the fence, is the land of the unfaithful, the wicked, the disobedient, the alien. But God is not pleased: those who were given the vineyard to tend have squandered the opportunity. The grapes are sour, wild, useless; all will be laid to waste, the laborers sent “to a miserable death.” All that privilege, all that power, all those riches – all taken away from the original tenants and given to those who know the rules of God’s economy, to people who will produce “the fruits of the kingdom.”

Another word for “kingdom” or “reign” of God is “commonwealth.” It came into English usage around the time of the reformation, the 16th century, and refers to the welfare, or wealth or weal, held in common by all the people. When we talk about the kingdom of God, or the reign of God, we know who is on top, who is King of kings, Lord of lords. But as I have talked about before, I find the word “commonwealth” gets to the heart of what God has in mind for us. God has a created the world, which the people of God hold in common. We are all stewards of this common wealth. When we think of the vineyard, say, as a “kingdom,” our lines of responsibility or accountability only go up, to God. But by using the word “commonwealth,” those ties reach out across the community, as well as up to the one who has created this wonderful world we all share.

The Gospel of Matthew is pretty specific about this parable: the Jews have received all the blessings of God. They are God’s special people, the follow the Torah, they are the light to the nations; they are supposed to be an example to the world about how to live in this world we all hold in common. And Matthew makes it pretty clear that Jesus believes the Jews have squandered this precious gift. They have become exclusive and selfish, and Matthew has Jesus even predict that they will be the ones to kill him.

That can be a dangerous way to read this text, after two thousand years of Christian history. That can be an anti-Semitic reading, part of the case used to accuse the Jews of being Christ-killers, to justify pogroms and prejudice.

I think it is much more powerful and provocative, however, to put ourselves in the place of those stewards: with what part of this great commonwealth of God’s creation have we been entrusted? Are we selfish with what we have been given? Do we let it go wild and sour, not caring how it grows?

Our Jewish friends have just ended their time of reckoning, of reacquainting themselves with what it means to live in the household of God. Our lessons today invite us to take a similar journey, to press on toward that goal, toward that heavenly prize, toward that fertile vineyard and that abundant commonwealth, that belongs to the common humanity of all the people of God.

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Missional church and the arts

What if we thought about church in another way, as "a small community that [moves] into a particular area (often one with a lot of deprivation and poverty) ... seeking to follow Christ but their focus is simply helping transform their community -- in arts, environment, in social needs, with youth and so on."

These are churches, as the English church missioner named Jonny Baker, "are not focused on growing big -- but more like the yeast of the kingdom that Jesus talked about infecting the wider batch of dough. ..." Such churches, Baker says, face "the challenge of weaning members off their addiction to consumer approaches to church where they get their fix of worship and teaching and meeting with friends before they could properly engage in this more local, outward-focused community approach (maybe we need a 12 step detox programme for leaving consumer church!?)"

We may benefit from thinking this way, as we explore how to connect our treasure, which is the Celebration of the Arts, into parts of the community that could use more art.

Thanks to the Patheos blog for sending this thought my way ...

"A prayer book even an atheist would love"

It does seem a teensy bit arrogant for a 21st century author to claim that he "edited" The Book of Common Prayer, but Brian Cummings seems to have added considerable value to familiar red book we find in our pews. In this 2011 volume (Oxford University Press), we can find the full texts of the 1549, 1559 and 1662 Prayer Books, along with introductions, explanations, notes and glossary. The review in the September 2012 issue of The Atlantic, gives the book a glowing recommendation -- both in its edited and "explained" form and in the original, which as the book upon which all prayer in our language is based "shaped the inner life and branded the tongue of the English-speaking peoples. Its phrases and rhythms did not merely enter the language. They largely defined the language. " Read more of the review here, and if you read it, let us know how you liked it!!

What I read - 2012

FINISHED:

At Simon's INSISTENCE I read The Hunger Games. Some parts I had to skim through, because the depictions of these young people fighting each other to the death was at times too gruesome, but it was overall well worth the read. NOW I have to get on with # 2 in the series

Dennis Lehane's A Given Day. Everything comes together in a slightly staged but effective way in 1919 Boston: anarchists, molasses, racism, repression and the Boston police strike. J. Edgar Hoover makes some unflattering cameos. I must say it is kind of Ragtime as it would be dramatized by Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck. It was in the days when you could tell what Boston block someone grew up on by the accent. The Irish don't come off all too well. Southie is a place to avoid in this prelude to The Depahted. It's good, though a little too graphically violent and written like a movie script. Let's just say Whitey Bulger came by his proclivities naturally.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman

quite charming and lovely; a peek into the modest domestic life and extraordinary yearnings of a summer community of Orthodox Jews in the Catskills

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

Also saw the Swedish version of the first book.

The reminders of domestic terror in the most intimate sense are deeply unsettling. The author reminds of the percentage of Swedish women who are abused, beaten, left for dead, even. It is an all-too-steady drumbeat beneath human society.

Meanwhile, I found a new collection of stories, that is easier to read before bed. I heard the most astounding story on Selected Shorts: "The Mappist" by Barry Lopez. You MUST read it. Before you know it, you are in another world, that shines the most wonderful light on this place we inhabit and how we live in it.

I had a brief flirtation with a few of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. Bracing. I am always on the look-out for her perceptive comments about upstate New York.

Done with Cheever, and LOVED it. Again. If you read nothing else, read "The Death of Justina." Then again, I also like, "Goodbye, My Brother." Cheever; the chronicler of a world falling apart.

This summer ...
Middlemarch by George Eliot. This wonderful story of the intertwined lives of villagers contains the requisite English characters of pompous rectors, impoverished strivers and beautiful young women. It's like reading Trollope: you'll find someone you know in Middlemarch.
and
The Collected Stories of John Cheever. A perennial favorite. Poignant stories of families in mid-century middle America. Reading it again is a bit like Mad Men, where you are glued, almost in horror, at the train wreck you know is about to happen in these people's lives.

Responding to the Unspeakable

The shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, in the days right before Christmas, with the deaths of small children and the people trying to protect them, wrench our hearts like nothing else. However we respond to this tragedy -- with silence, with weeping, with anger, with resolve to work so that something like this will never happen again -- all of our reactions are understandable. We need ways to regain our footing and imagine how we will live in the world as it is now, in this world in which we experience yet more grief and sadness.

On Sunday, December 16, the Prayers of the People at St. David's Church were in the words of parishioners and preachers, some from the very day of the tragedy. Find the text of those prayers on our Forming Disciples blog.